//------------------------------//
// Same Story, Different Day 
// Story: A Ripe Old Age 
// by HeartTortoisePigeonDog 
//------------------------------//

"Sixty-four long years..." is what she had wrote.

"Every story the bloody same, told differently."

She brought a shelf down with her as she stumbled in the direction of the door.

"Damn novels." She propped the shelf up and, fallen on the floor of her study as she was, attempted something like sweeping the books into the lowest shelf of the book-case. "You've ceased your novelty. Tired. Same story, different days, different details. Foundering formula. The same dull, idle object in shifting lighting. I am coming!"

A pounding resounded through her house.

"Daring Do! Urgent notice! Open up!"

She found herself somehow laying on the doormat. She slowly rose. Her legs felt like jelly and she braced against the door.

"I'm opening it!" The room whirled and whirled and the handle felt intangible. Falling back, she gripped the handle and it turned. Locked. She propped herself against the wall, struggling with the bolt. "Just a moment more!" Raging waters in her stomach beat against the coast of her throat and gravity determined to make her the fool, pulling at her from all directions.

The visitor caught her gnawing the wainscot when the puzzle of the lock was finally solved.

"Miss Do?"

She stopped biting the wood as one bites a pencil, and stood up as stabled-staggeredly as this visitor would allow for support. Her legs trembled.

"I..." She screwed up her features as though lost in thought. "I—I... My teeth hurt. Dweadfully sahr. Somfing awful." Her tongue felt heavy and numb in her mouth making speech feel something akin to talking through a thick wad of gum. "Somfing awful. I beg your pahdon...?"

"Sir Bristlewood."

"Oh, yes! I remember you. What the character that heads the excavations in that part of Saddle Awabia with the pyrwamids. Fine work you do, I just want to tell ya."

"Well, yes. Thank you." He helped her into a chair with some difficulty.

For a while Sir Bristlewood just stood opposite her, tracing the creasings on a letter he held, considering whether it right to ask her to do what he had been send to her for. To task this elderly mare, out-lived of her prime by a score, and clearly intoxicated beyond rational judgment, with such a dangerous assignment seemed too fool-hearty. What could the ponies who asked—no, insisted on having her, be thinking? 

Sir Bristlewood remembered Daring Do in her younger, more capable days. He was just a colt, not even a stallion yet, when she had wandered into his father's inn and told stories of her adventures, the bruises and scares of which sung as though painted on her face, which had inspired him to become an archaeologist. When he first began his career he was disappointed at the lack of adventure and soon became very frustrated. It took several years in his field to start enjoying it, and when he did, he got as much thrill and excitement from discovering a lost tomb, a small, broken artifact, or a simple letter as he imagined he would from chasing bad guys or being shot at. Soon history became alive and the adventure was not one of action but in the echos of the past, like secrets whispers.

And now his fascination with history, and passion for discovery has brought him back to her. He himself was no young, strapping stallion anymore. His youthful health was declining, if but slowly; a middle-aged stallion of Forty-two. And, he thought, if he himself, who was now starting to notice that hikes are not as easy as they used to be, was incapable of this task, how could she, far less able-bodied, a mare of sixty-something, who has been gossiped to be three sheets to the wind half the time, do more than he?

"So you know of me?" His eyes glistened upon talking with one of his heroes, but worry, mixed with no small amount of disappointment in her condition, wrinkled his brow.

"Of course. I am Daring Do. Adventurwah an' arche-optolis of Equestwia; it is part of my jod to know all who are meddlin' in my field. I love your hat!"

Sir Bristlewood flushed and quickly removed his panama hat. He pulled up his own chair to sit.

"No!" Daring Do nearly fell back in her chair, her eyes wide with wild excitement. "Please, get me another drink before you do!"

Sir Bristlewood could not believe what he was being asked, and his first instinct was to decline. The look in her eyes was desperate, almost fearful. He could not morally be the one to participate in feeding her evidently gluttonous addiction. It would be best for her to not have another drink and be no more compromised than she already was. Would it be better for him to lay her to bed and wait until morning for her piteous condition to pass before asking her? Though withstanding—

"For what did ya come here?"

"Huh?"

"My house. Why are you here? Who sent you? What do they want?"

The sudden change in her demeanor and the abruptness of the questions set him off balance.

"Are you deaf?" she spat. "I am sorry, but it only just occurred to me that I was not expecting visitors this evening; and your arrival is uncanny."

Sir Bristlewood was now sitting down and quite glued to his seat. Daring Do leered, her eyes penetrating and interrogative. She stood up and, hooves braced on the back of his chair, loomed over Sir Bristlewood as one would loom over one's own rape victim, tied to a chair, without escape. Even at this age, perhaps even because of her age, she cut a deep, intimidating air.

"All the more uncanny," she continued, "as it is pouring rain outside, and your jacket is hardly wet. I assume whomever sent you has quite the sum of money on my head, enough even to spare on your covered, luxuriant trip to my rural abode, to secure your compliance by writhen reason that it would not interfere with your comfort."

The stench of alcohol in her breath was strong, and he turned away. He felt something leave his grip. He looked up to find Daring Do breaking the seal on the letter. She slammed it open on the coffee table in another part of the room. She appeared to be reading it, but then she did something remarkable. She took the letter in both hooves, still fixed on it as though reading, and stumbled on two hooves into her study in the next room. A few moments past, during which Sir Bristlewood stared fixedly at the open study door, quite dumbfounded at Daring Do's sudden manic transformation.

There was an outcry, and then a loud crash from her study. Daring Do bolted out, tripping over a corner of a rug in her haste, and rushed at Sir Bristlewood with all the fury of bull.

"What is this?!" She threw the crumpled letter at him. "What is the meaning of this? I simply CAN NOT!"

Sir Bristlewood began opening and smoothing out the letter in his lap. He shook. Memories of his berating mother refused to leave his head.

Daring Do backed into the rear of a couch. She fumed: "I can't read a word of it!" She bucked the couch, shoving it back a few feet, stumbled back, swooned, and collapsed, falling over the back of the couch.

"Miss Do?" Sir Bristlewood muttered. Silence. "Are you alright?" He rose and peered over at her. She had vomited. "Alright, Miss Do. I can't allow this."

"What?" She pulled herself up to look at him. She was shaking and breathing heavily.

"Look at yourself." Sir Bristlewood sat on the love-seat near her and tossed the letter on the coffee table. "What have you been doing with your life since you stopped adventuring? Even the time between publications of your novels have become greater and greater. You came out with more novels during your tumultuous younger years than you have in your idyllic years of late."

Daring Do prostrated herself across the couch. The beams above her made her think of the many times she had been imprisoned.

"I've heard from the other archaeologists who have come to visit you over the years: how there was hardly a visit you were not intoxicated." He felt a special kind of elation he had not felt before as he berated his hero in her suffering. "I had come here to merely deliver an opportunity: a chance to relive the old-times once again for one brief and shining moment." He pronounced the last two words emphatically. Yes, he thought, there is magic in saying it like that; but now it is time to really drive it home. "They asked especially for you. They would have no other but you because, even now, you are the best, Daring Do. Do you know who sent me? The King and Queen of Saddle Arabia. They have recently discovered a map. It needs translation, but that shouldn't be much trouble for a genius like you, should it? Their inquiry and plea for your help was what the letter enclosed."

Daring Do moaned and rolled over. But she did not answer.

"Well, the ride they gave us is waiting outside. The matter is apparently urgent, though their Majesties were disinclined to reveal to me too many details—Celestia knows why. If you simply must insist on being difficult, I will have to let the ponies in whilst we wait for your answer." And with that.

She did not move. Her breathing had stopped. He shook her.

"Same story," she sighed.